Perspective
by FeatherKeeper
Summary: The discovery of a survivor in the heart of an Ancient base causes some among the Atlantis team to question their perspective.
1. Prologue: The War

I. (Hive ship, Wraith-Lantean War, Pegasus Galaxy, 10,000 years ago)

Four days until I am nine: My sister-queen gave me this data device today to help me learn my letters. She says I will need to learn the letters when I become a queen. I think that is a long time away. I hope so. I don't like work. I don't think she uses her letters much. She just makes everyone else use them.

Three days until I am nine: She read my device today and laughed at me. She says she uses her letters to read reports from the battles with the Lanteans, and to write sneaky messages to other queens on other hives, and to read our scientists' and commanders' reports, and lots of other things. I asked her if she liked reading all of that. She said that sometimes it was exciting and sometimes it made her angry. I think today she was angry until she read my "report." I made her promise not to read it without asking. She promised, but I don't believe her.

Two days until I am nine: We are moving into another sector. There are Lanteans there. I haven't seen a Lantean ship yet that I remember. She is very quiet. I feel her silence, so I know she is hiding something from me and everyone else. She has never told me on purpose, but she doesn't think she is old enough to be a queen. She is the youngest queen now. I think she is the youngest queen ever—but I haven't asked anyone, because that would make her angry if she found out.

My favorite brother took me to see her late in the cycle. She was talking with a commander when we came. She felt very happy to see me and our favorite brother (he is her favorite brother too, though she does not let him feel that.) She told us that the location of the Lanteans' newest research post has been discovered by our scout ships and that our hive is going to destroy it. Our favorite brother is eager. It is almost like hunger.

I am the only one who feels that she is afraid. I just feel sick.

Just one day until I am nine! One of my brothers spent all day with me teaching me about how the dematerializers on the darts work and showing me how it is done. The warrior he used to demonstrate was irritable by the end of the day. I don't understand how it works—but my brother is very excited, and I don't want to disappoint him. I am not like her. I do not have a great mind like hers. At least not yet. She is much like our scientists and commanders. I don't know what I am.

Another hive ship joined us today, so we will not be attacking the research post alone. She is a little happier now, but I don't think the other queen likes her. I don't like the other queen. She scares me.

I am nine today.

400 days until I am ten: As we came near to the research post, we saw a Lantean ship guarding the post. It wasn't there when the scout ships found the post. I talked to her just for a second today, and she said there will be battle. I think she believed this would happen. I asked her about the scout ships not seeing the Lantean ship. She told me that the Lanteans can make their ships invisible. They call it cloaking.

I don't feel like entering anything today. Our favorite brother and many others died in their darts. The other hive was destroyed and we all felt all of them die. She doesn't want to talk to me.

399 days until I am ten: After I made the last entry, I sneaked past the warriors (they can't see very well in their masks) outside her chamber and sat beside her. We sat there for a long time. Then I asked her, out loud so the guards wouldn't "overhear," what had happened to the other ship. She thought I meant the Lantean ship. She told me it was disabled and that we would board it and take prisoners to interrogate and feed upon. I told her I meant the other ship. She didn't say anything for a while. Then she asked me didn't I know that it had been destroyed? I told her I did, but what happened to it after? She understood what I meant. I'm not sure what I meant, but she understood. She said she didn't know. I asked her if that meant she didn't know what happened to our favorite brother either. I shouldn't have asked her that. Queens shouldn't cry. She told me, then, that she is too young to be a queen.

Today, she sent a boarding party to the Lantean ship. I asked if I could wait with her to see the Lanteans. I am angry with the Lanteans for killing our favorite brother. I hate the Lanteans. I tell her that. She says that this is war. I don't know what that is supposed to mean.

I have never hated anybody before, not even the Lanteans, but I hate them now. She hesitated. I thought she was going to say no, but she didn't. She hates the Lanteans, too.

The warriors and her high commander are bringing them in now. They look funny in their soft, unnaturally-cut uniforms. There aren't many of them. The Lantean commander is old and balding and has a fat little belly. He has a bruise on his face and he looks tired. I feel her surprise as the realization sinks in—just two hive ships actually defeated a Lantean ship. Our people have not had many victories like this in this war. She does not show it on her face, though. She just looks smug and cool. They seem surprised when they see her and me standing behind her and off to the side. Does she look young to them? I hope not. That would make her uneasy.

She glides towards the huddle of Lanteans. Her hands are flexing like she is preparing to feed. They are trying not to look afraid. They believe they are better than us. They believe they all deserve to live and all of their favored creations deserve to live, while we all deserve to die. We believe some of everything dies—it's just a matter of which ones.

The Lantean commander steps forward. She smiles and runs her fingers down his chest. She doesn't touch him with her palm. She is teasing him.

He speaks in his ugly, strange language that moves like ours except all the sounds are ugly. "There will be no purpose in torturing me or any of my crew. We will tell you nothing." I want to hate him, but my sister-queen and my brothers have taught me that sacrifice and loyalty to your people are good things. I know they believe this, but do they not believe that these qualities are good things in Lanteans too? I am confused.

"I know my own purposes, Commander Berainn," she said in his language. It is strange to hear her use his name as if she talked with Lanteans daily. I don't understand names. What kind of word can mean a whole person? Her voice is not the voice she uses with me and my brothers or our sisters or even the worshipers.

"I—" he starts.

She has him kneel, like at most feedings, but the feeling is different. I feel the power of her mind. She never opens all of it—ever. She is angry. He falls to his knees.

I have seen many feedings before. It is part of life—for life to exist, death must also. But she has no hunger. She has only hate and vengeance and a purpose. I try to stop listening. By the time he is dead, she knows how to attack the research post. She lets his dead body fall. A warrior drags him away quickly. She turns to the next Lantean. I feel her mind. It is excited and hungry—not in a necessary way, but in what the warriors call kill lust. She wants to know whether or not she should try to get inside the research post before she destroys it, and she intends to find out from the others.

I leave. If this is war, I hate it too.

398 days until I am ten: She read this without asking. She told me she did it tonight, out loud, when there was no one else around. She broke her promise to me. I am angry because I trusted her. I ran away from her and hid among the darts.

397 days until I am ten: They destroyed the research post late last cycle. The warriors came into the dart bay where I was hiding. One of them found me and sent me back to the living quarters. When the survivors came back, I went to find him and asked him to tell me about it. He told me that, ever since the battle between the hive ships and the Lantean ship had begun, the Lantean post had been covered by its shield. I saw its shield when I saw a glimpse of the battle from one of the display screens. It looked like a shiny bubble. The warrior told me that the Lanteans could have hidden behind their shield for decades if our queen hadn't noticed that it was not designed to expand downward. She told the warriors at the guns to fire at the rock beneath the edge of the shield instead of at the post behind the shield. I didn't understand everything he said, but somehow they made the shield fail because it had to go all the way around and didn't after our weapons made holes underneath it at the edge. I can't believe they would design something like that. I asked him if we could defeat Atlantis the same way. He laughed at me. He said this little outpost and its shield were never designed to run away into space like Atlantis. The weakness in this shield was based on the idea that it would not have to extend any further. My sister-queen is smart. I am not so angry at her now. Maybe just a little.

I guess Atlantis is more important and has a better shield than a little old research post, but everyone is still happy that we destroyed it. I wonder what they were working on.

396 days until I am ten: Nothing happened today except a boring hyperspace jump and a small culling.

395 days until I am ten: We met up with six other hive ships today. Another queen came on board to talk with my sister-queen in private. She was very tall and had long white hair like a male's. She brought a large party with her, including some worshippers. My sister doesn't like worshippers. She only keeps one or two of them because other queens have them. I think that's stupid. She says it is politics. I asked my sister-queen later what was going on with the other hive ships. She said she couldn't tell me yet because I didn't need to know. I pouted the rest of the cycle, but it didn't help.

394 days until I am ten: We ambushed a small Lantean transport convoy that was guarded by one of their warships. I think they were stopped for repairs to something. Our hive ship was not in charge until two others were destroyed. I was sad that the others died, but my sister-queen kept us and one of the others safe. She says it was the way the battle went, but I say it was because of her. The Lantean warship tried to contact us during the battled. It jumped to hyperspace soon after all of the transports were destroyed. The other hive ships wanted the chase it, but my sister-queen told them it would be too fast for us. I could tell it bothered her not to chase it.

393 days until I am ten: I got to fly a scout ship today! When we and the other hive ship stopped on a hyperspace rest, one of my brothers took me far out from the hives so I wouldn't run into anything and let me interface with the controls. It feels funny to know what the ship's programming is thinking.

When I told her about it, she tried to act excited for me, but I think she was thinking about something that was worrying her. I don't like that. She doesn't show me her thoughts anymore. I told her that. She looked surprised. That surprised me. I can almost never surprise her. She always knows what I'm thinking. She must be really worried. I asked her out loud what was worrying her to keep it a secret. She took me into her chamber and shut the door in her warrior guards' faces. I thought that was funny. She told me out loud that I could not tell anyone. I said I wouldn't. She took a breath and sat down with me on the steps up to her throne. She said that we had eavesdropped on a Lantean message—and it was about her. She said they have a picture of our hive and name for her. I don't know what that means, but she is afraid.

381 days until I am ten: I haven't made an entry for two sets of cycles. That seems like a long time because a lot has happened. After the other hive ship that was with us left, a Lantean warship came out of hyperspace and attacked us. I was asleep when the first drone hit us. We jumped into hyperspace. A set of cycles after that, we were surprised by three Lantean cruisers. We had to destroy one of them before we could even jump to hyperspace. The high commander was proud of himself for losing no darts. Two cycles later, we went into orbit around a planet to cull it. The culling darts came under fire by cloaked Lantean fighters. They were returning to the hive like they were supposed to for reinforcements, but she ordered them shot down before they could get near us. They had been tagged with something! The high commander says he thinks it was either a biological agent or a high-yield explosive designed to destroy our hive. Everyone would have died. I hate the Lanteans. I can't sleep anymore.

380 days until I am ten: She came to me late last cycle. She told me she had read my device again. I tried to be angry at her, but I couldn't. I don't know why, but this time I wanted her to know what I was thinking. Out loud, I asked her if the Lanteans were chasing us, even though it seems obvious that they are. She said yes. I asked why. She told me that we were the most successful hive—that we won more than anybody else in a very short time, and that the Lanteans wanted to stop us.

I felt that there was something she doesn't want me to know—and that part of her does want me to know: she thinks it is her fault we are being chased. I asked her if it's true. She laughed. It was a sad sound. She looked away and asked if it is arrogant to think so. I told her I didn't know. She said that the Lanteans are arrogant and that was what would bring them down in the end. Then she smiled and took my hands and told me she doesn't think that we are important enough to be chased for very long. We have just attracted too much attention and that I shouldn't worry. I can tell she doesn't believe it.

What she said about the war…"in the end." She doesn't except to see it end. That makes me feel sick. Our mother-queen died in the war. I don't want my sister-queen to die too.

379 days until I am ten: There was a little culling today, and no Lanteans! The high commander brought up the leader of the village to her because the leader claimed to have made a deal with the queen of our hive (he wouldn't know one hive from another, I don't think) to trade scheduled acceptable offerings for leniency. I think the high commander was amused by him and thought she would be too. She was, for a while, but then she got tired of his whining. She had him hauled off and sealed in a pod with the rest of them. I don't think he is very strong, though. Whatever warrior or scientist gets the leader as his portion will feel slighted.

378 days until I am ten: Next cycle we are going to meet up with another hive ship and go t[(([([''' (('['''[(['( [([' (''((

[data corrupt, abort translation

_The wreckage of the hive ship floated eerily in the silence after the battle. The only motion aboard was the ghostlike drifting motion of the debris and the bodies, both of the Wraith crew and their human victims that had somehow been released unconscious from their pods during the failure of the ship's systems. A cluster of Wraith had escaped decompression, only to die from the suffocation. The __Lantean__ crew exploring the wreckage had found them already. A few dozen survived in the command chamber. They killed all but the queen with some measure of difficulty. Hand-to-hand combat with the Wraith was not a wise tactical maneuver. _

_The technician just wanted to get out of this place and get back to Atlantis. There were too many dead bodies here. Everyone on this ship was dead except for him and his spacewalk partner._

_A hand brushed against the __Lantean__ technician's suit. He jumped and looked down. A Wraith commander floated by, staring off into the vacuum._

_He heard a laugh in his helmet. He turned around slowly, looking for his partner._

_"Was there anything worthwhile on that?" His partner gestured widely in the clumsy suit to the egg-case-shaped data device he was holding._

_He looked down at it. It lay, gleaming in the half-light. The edge of it oozed a thin yellow fluid that floated away in perfect frozen droplets. There was something written on the surface that he wasn't sure he was translating right. _Hers, _perhaps?__ He turned it over in his hands. "No." He gave it a shove and let it float away. _


	2. Unearthed

I. (M24-660, known as Torora, Pegasus Galaxy, Present Day)

Rodney was puffing to keep up with his white-bearded guide. Weak light from flickering mirrored lanterns lit the tunnel, but the bearded chief scientist never missed a step. Primitive, really. How did they expect him to work in these conditions? Rodney's breath hung as a mist on the cold air. It was freezing in here! The scientist—what was his name, Dalty or Darbin or something—talked rapidly as he walked. "At first we thought it was just a data storage center. There were many empty data crystals—at least we think they're empty after examining them—"

McKay froze in his tracks. "You moved the crystals? No-no-no-no-no, this is not how this works. You see, you cannot _move_ the crystals and then expect me to figure out exactly what sequence they were supposed to be in."

Blinking behind his round spectacles, Dalty-or-something finally stopped. "We documented the locations, but many of them seemed to have been already out of place. Several were merely fragm—"

Rodney interrupted. "You said the whole place was flooded?"

"Well, yes—and then very quickly and artificially frozen." He hesitated. "As far as we can tell." Was he nervous? That was…reassuring.

Frozen? It was 24° C outside! It was probably _1°_ in here. Actually, never mind. He saw ice crystals reforming on some puddles. Make that 0. "Why would they do that?" A failsafe of some kind?

"I was about to show you." Darbling or whatever shoved his gloved hands into the pockets of his parka and led Rodney to a railing. Rodney found himself looking down at a forty-foot drop. And a dead female Wraith.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Dorbin said in a hushed biologist-in-awe voice.

"In a creepy _I-would-eat-you-if-I-weren't-dead_ sort of way, I guess so," McKay said. "Kind of small, isn't she?"

Dorby's bushy white eyebrows drew together as if Rodney has just personally insulted him. "Really?"

"It's hard to tell from up here, but—" Rodney clapped Durby on the back—"it looks like you've got a miniature Wraith."

"Hmm." Dorble rubbed his beard. "We have never had any reports of anyone seeing a female."

"Yeah, well—" Rodney began with a worldly-wise air.

Zelenka skidded around the corner on a thin sheet of ice, cradling his tablet computer. "They opened the last chamber. This wasn't a data storage facility. It was for research on the Wraith. We found some intact data, and we think they were trying to hide their research from the other Ancients."

"Why would they do that?" Dubrin asked.

Probably because the Ancient version of the IOA didn't approve of their methods. "Well, let's go see."

"The bodies or the data crystals?" Zelenka asked, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

Rodney stopped short. Bodies? Plural? "There are other bodies?"

"There were five human-looking bodies as well. We are assuming that they were Ancients, but we can't be sure. Perhaps you have the means to determine…?"

"Right-right-right." Rodney waved him off and hurried down the tunnel towards the direction Zelenka had come from. "I'll get Keller on it. Hey," he said, stopping. "Are any of them frozen still?"

"No, we had to thaw everything to get to them." Derble said, frowning. "Why?"

(M35-117, New Atlantis, Infirmary, 1 hour later)

Dr. Jennifer Keller watched the screen of the Ancient scanner. "This one was an Ancient, too." she said.

"I thought so," Darbin said, watching breathlessly. He had insisted on accompanying the bodies. Sheppard was off somewhere with Teyla and Ronon when Colonel Carter had gone back to Earth for some reason. That left Dr. McKay behind to make all of the decisions. Jennifer wasn't sure she was comfortable with that. "Was he fed upon like Dr. Zelenka thought?"

Jennifer eyed the mummified-looking tissue and twisted expression of the corpse. "I can't scan the body and tell, but I would guess so." There wasn't much left to autopsy. "Help me put him in the morgue."

After Jennifer shut the drawer, Darbin stepped back. "That just leaves her," he said with satisfaction, nodding towards the draped Wraith body. The water from the melted ice had darkened the sheet covering the body.

Jennifer nodded. She had never had to do an autopsy—no, necropsy—on an alien before. It made her a little nervous to have an audience, even as unimposing as Darbin was. But he was impressed by stitches that eventually disintegrated, so the Ancient scanner and even the EKG might as well have been magic, so that made it a little easier. She flipped the sheet back.

She had expected some tissue damage from the freezing temperatures and the ten thousand years that had passed, but she couldn't see any. "Wow." It sounded stupid when she had said it. "Look at this." She flipped the high-powered surgical light on. Darbin peered down through his spectacles. "Have you ever seen one up close?"

"No," Darbin said. It sounded like a confession. "I'm afraid I'm not the explorer your people are."

"I haven't either. A live one, I mean." She looked down at the Wraith's face. The skin was very pale. An ornate tattoo curled around her left eye down her cheekbone. Her hair was dark brown and still wet. It might have a reddish cast when it was dry. Full, pale lips around small pointed teeth. Those slanting pits on the cheeks that Keller suspected were either sensitive to electrical impulses—like heartbeats, which was a disturbing thought—or some kind of telepathic communication, which was more likely. Keller pulled opened the Wraith's left eye. The iris was still a bright green after all this time. Huh. Usually the proteins degraded very quickly. The freezing must have happened within minutes after the compound was flooded. The vertically slit pupil seemed that reminded Jennifer of a horror novel she read in junior high. She shivered involuntarily.

She moved on. "Well, this doesn't look like the Wraith clothing of choice," she said, looking at the simple, light blue pants and shirt. It looked a little like surgical scrubs.

"Prison clothing, perhaps?" Darbin suggested. "Oh, look here, Doctor." He pointed to a slender five-inch-long sliver of broken data crystal protruding from the Wraith's abdomen. "Cause of death?"

"Maybe," she said, but she doubted it. From everything she had heard, it would take more that to kill a Wraith. "When we get further into the autopsy," –there, she'd said it again— "we'll know more."

Darbin grabbed a pair of forceps from a tray and plucked the crystal out of the wound. "No, wait—" Jennifer said, but it was too late. So much for documentation.

Darbin turned away from the body and held the crystal up to the light to examine it. Jennifer squinted up into the light at it. "We found another piece of this in a second-level chamber. Dr. McKay will be glad to know that we recovered another piece. I wonder if he can put it back together."

At least she could determine whether the injury was postmortem or not now that the crystal was out of the way. She sighed and turned back to the body.

The wound was gone. The hole in the cloth was still there, but the skin underneath was perfectly smooth and white.

Dead Wraith don't heal.

It was like something out of a nightmare. Time stopped. She heard herself stammer something about security, but she wasn't sure it made sense. Darbin was stopping to ask questions. She thought she pushed him out of the room.

She didn't know what to do. Now that she knew it was alive, she couldn't let it die. Now that she knew it was alive, she couldn't stay there with it—her—whatever.

She tried to tell herself that the body on the table was just another patient, but her hands were shaking as she felt for a pulse on the Wraith's neck. What was she doing?? She didn't even know if they _had_ an artery there!

They must, because she felt a weak flutter under her fingertips.

The Wraith wasn't breathing. Jennifer should bag her or start rescue breathing or something—a thought whispered "_if you want to save it__"_—but she felt frozen.

The Wraith's body jerked suddenly. Jennifer snatched her hand back on reflex.

Behind Jennifer, the infirmary door burst open. Sheppard? Was that Sheppard? No, it was Ronon. He raised his enormous gun. She heard it charging.

She batted it down.

_Stupid_, part of her said. _Kill it_.

There was an aide standing immobilized with fear over in the corner by a med cart. Had she been there the whole time? "Suction," Jennifer said, not knowing why. The aide blinked and stammered for a second, but she scurried off.

Ronon looked at her like she had gone crazy.

(New Atlantis, Briefing Room, 30 min. later)

"Remind me again why we have a Wraith-cicle in the infirmary?" Sheppard wore his trademark quizzical look. Rodney hated that look. It was annoying to be interrupted in the middle of something important to answer stupid questions. Right now, he was trying to brief Sheppard on what was going on, and Sheppard kept coming back to bothersome details.

"Keller wanted to bring it back. We thought it was dead, okay?"

"You thought it was dead? It's a Wraith! It's like a…like an evil Energizer Bunny."

Rodney threw up his hands. "It was _frozen_!"

"I leave for a few hours and you have to go find yourself a frozen Wraith and defrost it in the middle of the city…"

Incredible. He was having _fun_ with this. This was…not fair. Rodney rolled his eyes heavenward. "Will you—just—"

The briefing room door whished open. Teyla strode in, wearing one of those leather numbers. Too bad she wasn't blond. And educated beyond _ooh-magic-door_ level. Well, she would look kind of funny blond…but maybe not in a bad way.

"McKay!" Sheppard was giving him that chiding primrose path look. Rodney almost snorted. As if Captain-Kirk-reincarnate could talk.

"Hmm?" Rodney gave him what he hoped was an innocent look. "Oh, right, the Wraith."

Ronon got bigger and meaner looking—if that were possible—when he said that. "I say we kill her." Good thing he was on the right side.

"We may not have to," Teyla said. It sounded like she had told him that at least once. "Dr. Keller says it probably will not survive more than a few hours."

Ronon glared at Teyla. "She's a Wraith. She lived through being frozen and buried for ten thousand years. I think she'll survive the infirmary."

"Apparently being unfrozen is more dangerous than being frozen," Teyla said. "Dr. Keller has told us that it was thought that only a few creatures with simple systems designed for it could survive the process." The sound of the gate being dialed from off-world interrupted Teyla's uninformed regurgitations of information.

"She's early." Sheppard said, glancing at his watch and standing up. "The IOA must've given her an extra-warm welcome." The rest of the team trailed along behind him down to the gate room.

Sam stepped through the shimmering blue pool of the event horizon. Why couldn't she cut her hair? Short hair was sexier. Especially _blond_ short hair…

Teyla was giving him a disapproving look. Was he that obvious?

"Hey!" Sam said. She had her one little bag with her. She stopped and looked first at Sheppard, then at Rodney, then at Teyla, and finally at Ronon. "Why does everybody look so guilty?"

"Rodney brought home a pet," Sheppard said dryly.

"Excuse me? _Keller_ brought it back—"

"—while you were in charge!" Sheppard finished.

"Only because _you_ were gone!"

Sam held up a hand. "What is 'it'?"

Sheppard put on a mock-innocent face and shrugged. "Oh, nothing big. He promised to feed it. Won't be too much trouble. Just a Wraith queen or princess or something like that. "

Sam suddenly looked very tired. "You're joking."

Rodney nodded over to Ronon, whose put-out caveman expression told her everything she needed to know.

She groaned. "And I thought things were going to get back to normal after I got away from the IOA."

"This is normal," Sheppard said very unhelpfully. He took her bag from her.

(New Atlantis, Infirmary)

She woke with a bright, bright light in her eyes. She fought to focus. Everything looked vague, watery. A face. There was a face two hands-breadths above hers. The smell of the skin, the breath. Lantean? Lanteans had her again? No!

No! She had been so close to being free!

She struck out in rage. The face jerked away from her, but not fast enough. She could catch it, she would see the fear in the eyes of this enemy, this Lantean. The glands in her arm and hand ached as they swelled with enzyme.

Restraints snapped her back down against the table and her sight went dark for an instant. The breath rushed out of her. Her lungs hurt. Her eyes hurt. Something small and sharp tore at the skin on the back of her hand. She gasped for air and lay back, still. The sounds around her were muffled in a dull ring.

Her sight cleared and color returned. Her eyes were regenerating. What had happened to her eyes? She remembered nothing that would have damaged her eyes. A bright flicker of panic flared up, along with a memory.

[_The water.__ She held up her hands futilely against the flood wall and turned her head away, screaming in fury. They had trapped her. __Ensnared by dead men._

She could see, smell now. These were not Lanteans, or at least not all of them. But the room was. Some of the technology was.

There was one behind her. The face with the bright light. A human, a woman, with a bag of fluid connected to a tube. The human injected something in bag and stepped away quickly. The bag was connected to the spine in her hand, she realized. They were putting something in her body. Sedative. She wasn't thinking clearly. She couldn't think, couldn't remember. Her hands were shaking. Had they done all of this to her? How long had she been here? How much time had she lost to this blank chasm of memory?

It was cold, so cold. Everything was pain. But the sedative mix was reaching her, and it was strong. It had been so long since she had been without pain. She stopped fighting it.


End file.
